A busy Sunday morning

I woke up this morning at 5:00AM to prepare for my first task of the day, helping my neighbourhood pick up garbage for our "spring cleaning" of the area. Junko and Conan got a reprieve, since he's so young, and because she's a mother with a young baby. Fathers of young babies don't seem to qualify, it seems. :(

The event was to officially begin at 6:00AM, but having learnt my lesson from previous clean-ups, I left the house at 5:20, garbage bag in hand to start scouring the ground for cans, paper and what not. Sure enough, there were already a few elderly members of our community working away. Quickly joining them, in short order I was able to fill my bag with many items beside the river, left mostly by fishermen.

At 6:00, a few stragglers showed up, (on time, mind you) including one of our newer neighbours, who's a nice guy in his 40's from Morioka (our prefectural capital). Of course, he quickly put two and two together of what a "6:00AM" start REALLY means, here in the countryside. Most of the garbage was already cleaned up, and thus you have to carry around a big bag with a pittance of refuse inside. I felt his pain, yet secretly was pleased not to be in his shoes this time. :)

We finished around 6:30, and as I was heading back to the house, noticed one of the neigbours burning some small trees and brush he'd cut down by the river. This is quite common here, as many people burn weeds they pull out of their gardens and rice fields. However, I was thinking that as it was so windy today, perhaps it wasn't wise to have a fire outdoors. Still, I went home to eat breakfast. Perhaps 30 minutes later, we heard sirens (the mechanical type), but didn't really make the connection. At 8, I took Conan for a walk, only to find more than ten firetucks and many volunteer firefighters milling about, putting out the remains of a large brush fire. It had burned away most of the tall reeds along the riverbank down the street from our house. Quite a wind, ineed. Fortunately, our neighbourhood was safe, and no one was injured. It made for an interesting morning, though.